max flash sync speed

?....I started trying to research this but I'm just getting a little bit confused.I understand the need for a flash and I understand the desire for having a flash off camera however the d3100 and d5000 don't have flash commander capability so I'm looking at some of the aftermarket flash commanders like youngwow (spelled wrong) make and I'm just trying to determine will those allow me to get a flash sync rate above 1/ 250th of a second and do I really need to have anything faster than that for creating backlit strobe effect.also how is sync different from just saying remote flash (dummified).apparently nikon SB 800 and SB 900 will allow me to add remote flash commander capability but if it won't allow me to achieve a flash faster than the 1/250th of a second it really doesn't help me I think....

Not sure if either the 3100 or 5000 are capable of it, but Nikon does have what they call High Speed Synch.

patrick in memphis said:

?....I started trying to research this but I'm just getting a little bit confused.I understand the need for a flash and I understand the desire for having a flash off camera however the d3100 and d5000 don't have flash commander capability so I'm looking at some of the aftermarket flash commanders like youngwow (spelled wrong) make and I'm just trying to determine will those allow me to get a flash sync rate above 1/ 250th of a second and do I really need to have anything faster than that for creating backlit strobe effect.also how is sync different from just saying remote flash (dummified).apparently nikon SB 800 and SB 900 will allow me to add remote flash commander capability but if it won't allow me to achieve a flash faster than the 1/250th of a second it really doesn't help me I think....

Click to expand...

Any speedlight should easily do the 1/200 second maximum sync speed of the camera. Not an issue.
Except, it is possible that (if used) some radio triggers can slow it down just a bit. Not likely, but not impossible in some cases.

On the camera hot shoe, triggering would be no issue.

To trigger a remote flash, the choices are:

1. Radio trigger, transmitter on hot shoe and receiver on the remote flash. This is most often manual flash mode. For example, the Yongnuo RF-603 trigger (you need two, one is transmitter, one is receiver).

2. Optical slave trigger (including $10 Ebay types), which trigger the Manual flash in sync from seeing the Manual flash of any other flash. So you could have one radio receiver, and two optical slave triggers, etc. Or the camera internal flash in Manual flash mode could be the trigger.

3. PC sync cord, if flash and camera have provision for it. To one flash, and the others could be optical slaves.

4. Nikon commander, which lower cost Nikon cameras do not have. You could add one, but these cameras still would have no FV Lock feature, which is rather important.

More at How to trigger speedlights Off camera

I question that you need faster sync speed. I would ask Why? That purpose needs elaboration.

Camera have worked like this forever, and very few of us ever need more. The speed light is extremely fast (called speedlight). Speed is faster if not at maximum power. All studio portraits in history are taken at a speed not exceeding maximum sync speed (1/200 second for your camera models - it used to be 1/60 second not that long ago). The flash is greatly faster than that, the flash is what stops motion, so it will not be an issue (in any reasonable situation).

See Capability of flash units for high speed photography about example of stopping a milk drop that has fallen two feet (speed 11.5 feet per second) with a shutter speed approximately 1.5 seconds. The speedlight stops the motion...

If you want to know more about the meaning of the maximum shutter sync speed,
see Maximum Shutter Sync Speed for Flash - Four Flash Photography Basics we must know

Your cameras do not have Auto FP HSS (and the Yongnuo model likely does not either), but it is described at
Auto FP and HSS

For doing stop motion of water or rain in mid air u supposedly need a flash capable of 1/800+ to back light the watet...I will ck out the hyperlinks u attached...thanks

After reading those maybe I am misunderstanding how to use a flash say at m1/2 & above.basically its not about how fast the flash is but more about the power at which its flashed

On speedlights, 1/2 power is BOTH power level and relative to speed duration. This is true of Speedlights, and is the reason they are called speedlights. It would not represent almost all studio flash, which are not speedlights (very few are).

1/2 power on a moderate speedlight would be faster than 1/800 second.

Here is the chart from the Nikon SB-700 manual.

Flash duration (approx.)
1/1042 sec. at M1/1 (full) output
1/1136 sec. at M1/2 output
1/2857 sec. at M1/4 output
1/5714 sec. at M1/8 output
1/10000 sec. at M1/16 output
1/18182 sec. at M1/32 output
1/25000 sec. at M1/64 output
1/40000 sec. at M1/128 output

The full power level is misleading, that is the standard T.5 time, and is not truncated shorter (has a long trailing tail). T.5 measures the time that the power is above 1/2 peak. Full power actually would be about 3x longer, maybe 1/350 second.

The rest of the levels are truncated, and at least T.1 or better.

Explanation: Speedlights always flash at full power (full voltage), but control their power by truncating (quenching off) the flash duration. So, as more power is quenched off and the power becomes low, they also be tremendously fast.

Nikon says 1/2 power is 1/1136 second duration. This is typical.

I used to do water drop splashes at about 1/64 power, for immense speed stopping capability. The flash is pretty close to the water drop, so this low power easily works.

If this is your use (close water drops), then a hot shoe extension cable (like Nikon SC-28) would also work for a remote flash. However, the SC-28 cord is not very suitable for distances more than 3 or 4 feet.

I may be wrong here, but it seems you are confusing shutter speed with, I'll call it exposure duration...
That 1/250th is your shutter duration, the time the shutter is open. Your camera won't properly synchronize with the flash at speeds above 1/250th. However, the exposure duration of the flash itself (the burst of light) will be much shorter, typically in the thousandths of a second. That burst of light must go off while both of your shutter curtains are open. On your camera, the rear curtain starts to follow the front curtain before the front curtain fully clears from in front of the sensor at speeds above 1/250th, so you only get a slit of exposure when the flash goes off. At 1/250th, both curtains are fully open when the flash goes off, giving that burst of light to the entire sensor. Now, if your ambient light isn't bright enough to cause exposure ghosting at 1/250th, your exposure will be just the duration of the flash itself, which will be fast enough to stop motion. If you get ghosting, move the flash closer to your subject, allowing smaller apertures.
Hint: As you stop down the flash power from full to 1/2, to 1/4, etc., etc., the flash duration gets even shorter.
Hope that helps.

Except maximum sync speed is 1/200 second on D3100 and D5000 mentioned.

Ok I think I have a better grasp on it...now I need to figure out how to adjust power on my opteka flash..thanks

As others have said, if the flash is the dominant light source, then the synch speed does not matter. It will be over in less than 1/1000 of a sec. Note that the flash will fire when the shutter is wide open, that is the first curtain has opened and the second curtain has not started.

The problem starts when you want the flash to fill in, that is there is enough ambient light for a normal exposure at higher speeds, and the flash is used to modify the shadow region. That is when you may need a faster synch speed. Unfortunately, the focal plane shutters used in Nikon cameras do not operate faster than 1/250 sec at the maximum, and at 1/200 in most. For faster speeds you need the shutter in the lense. These lenses then enable the flash to synch at 1/500, 1/800 and in some cases 1/1600 of a second. Some of the cameras that support lenses with shutter are Hasselblad, Rollie and Phase, these are all MF cameras, most of the current 35mm cameras do not support lenses with shutters.

If you are unable to use HSS you could invest in a Light Meter that does both ambient and flash like a Sekonic L358. It can take the ambient plus flash; move the jog wheel to get 30% flash. If you do it enough times plus whatever modifier you are using and power setting of the flash (manual power) you can nail a decent image. Although not taken with a Nikon this is what 30% flash looks like; the higher the percentage the background becomes darker. Since the the flash is limited by the sync speed it would be in open shade. As AROY mentioned the MF usually have what is called Leaf Shutter (shutter in the lens not the body) can sync at much higher shutter speeds.

Lou Cioccio

patrick in memphis said:

After reading those maybe I am misunderstanding how to use a flash say at m1/2 & above.basically its not about how fast the flash is but more about the power at which its flashed

Click to expand...

It is about how fast the flash is - and the speed of the flash is related to the power output. It is not about how fast the shutter is or what the sync speed is - when you are using only the flash to light up a subject, all it matters is the the shutter is opened (doesn't matter how long) when the flash fires.

I don't know if you've seen images of the milk drop or the bullet through an apple done by Prof Edgerton of MIT - I took a class from him; that's how old I am!! The way it's done (remember those were the old days of slow electronics) is the camera is set at speed B - ie shutter locked opened, then when the bullet contacts the apple the flash goes off - that duration of the flash is the exposure time. (The whole thing is done in a pitch dark lab!)

So, back to modern flash and camera - the shutter speed is irrelevant, only that it's opened when the flash fires. The max sync speed is the fastest shutter the camera can operate and still have the "envelop" of flash completely inside the time the shutter is opened - you can see that the slower the better. If you look at the specs of your flash, you'll see that the flash duration range from 1/1000 sec to 1/10,000 secs - that duration is your exposure time - not the shutter speed. But the duration time is controlled by the power output - thus, you control the duration time by the power level. (In laboratory strobes we used, the power remains constant and the duration time of the strobe can be adjusted!)

Now, of course, if you use the flash as fill in, than the exposure of the main subject within range of the speedlight will be affected by the power output (ie duration of flash) but the background exposure will be affected by the shutter speed. Look at the photos in this article to get an appreciation of what the shutter speed will do to the background when you use your flash as a fill-in and how little effect it has on the main subject that it lights up.

Hope that helps.

480sparky said:

Not sure if either the 3100 or 5000 are capable of it, but Nikon does have what they call High Speed Synch.

Click to expand...

Iread that article and the writer says "[h=3]Setting up your camera and Speedlights[/h]When photographing sports action I will set each Speedlight to the REMOTE mode and adjust my Manual Power Output setting via the Nikon SU-800 Commander. Then I go into the Bracketing/Flash category in the custom setting menu of the camera and select the Auto FP 1/250 setting that activates the High-Speed Sync mode. This setting will enable you to shoot at a fast shutter speed—faster than the normal flash sync speed of 1/250, which is too slow to stop the action."

This does not work on my D7100. If I set to AutoFP 1/250 then 1/250 is the fastest shutter speed I can select. Maybe I misunderstood. I got excited coz I'd love to be able to use faster shutter speeds than the allowable 1/250 & 1/320 flash synch speeds

Vixen said:

Iread that article and the writer says "Setting up your camera and Speedlights

When photographing sports action I will set each Speedlight to the REMOTE mode and adjust my Manual Power Output setting via the Nikon SU-800 Commander. Then I go into the Bracketing/Flash category in the custom setting menu of the camera and select the Auto FP 1/250 setting that activates the High-Speed Sync mode. This setting will enable you to shoot at a fast shutter speed—faster than the normal flash sync speed of 1/250, which is too slow to stop the action."

This does not work on my D7100. If I set to AutoFP 1/250 then 1/250 is the fastest shutter speed I can select. Maybe I misunderstood. I got excited coz I'd love to be able to use faster shutter speeds than the allowable 1/250 & 1/320 flash synch speeds

Click to expand...

When you go faster than the max sync speed of the camera, you will then be at the mercy of the Speedlight. In other words, when you use the High Speed Sync mode (ie FP sync), it's the speed light that dictates what the max sync speed would be. I have a SB700 and I have used it at 1/4000 sec shutter speed with my D7100. I understand it can do 1/8000 but never actually used it. (See page 245 of your D7100 manual) But using the FP mode really burns up your speedlight batteries fast. The way it works is the flash puts out a series of 1/10,000 sec pulses of light in that mode - sure heated up my SB700 real fast.

So, not all speedlight can work in the high-speed sync mode with your camera but if you have the right one, you can go 1/8000 shutter speed.

HSS (High Speed Flash works) differently. The flash emits a series of small flash in synch with the shutter. That is why the power rating for HSS flash is much lower. In contrast with the D70, the exposure operated electronically when using HSS, so you could synchronize beyond 1/2000 sec (I do not remember how much exactly).

yauman said:

When you go faster than the max sync speed of the camera, you will then be at the mercy of the Speedlight. In other words, when you use the High Speed Sync mode (ie FP sync), it's the speed light that dictates what the max sync speed would be. I have a SB700 and I have used it at 1/4000 sec shutter speed with my D7100. I understand it can do 1/8000 but never actually used it. (See page 245 of your D7100 manual) But using the FP mode really burns up your speedlight batteries fast. The way it works is the flash puts out a series of 1/10,000 sec pulses of light in that mode - sure heated up my SB700 real fast.

So, not all speedlight can work in the high-speed sync mode with your camera but if you have the right one, you can go 1/8000 shutter speedView attachment 125613.

Click to expand...

Ah...of course I just read that small bit not realising he was referring to HSS flash. Oh well......I continue to wish for faster speeds but at this point in time new flash units are not high on my priority list, so I continue to be limited to 1/250 or 1/320. I guess I was hopeful he had revealed some secret I didn't know about

Vixen said:

This does not work on my D7100. If I set to AutoFP 1/250 then 1/250 is the fastest shutter speed I can select. Maybe I misunderstood. I got excited coz I'd love to be able to use faster shutter speeds than the allowable 1/250 & 1/320 flash synch speeds

Click to expand...

It will work, at least if your flash can do HSS. What flash are you using? The internal flash cannot do it, which I suspect may be your meaning, why you don't see it work. SB-300, 400 cannot do it either. SB-600, 700, 800, 900 can do it. See the manual chart just above.
(The internal flash can be commander to control HSS flashes at fast shutter, but the internal contribution must be turned off).

Auto FP is specifically to allow shutter speeds faster than the 1/250 sync speed. Just turn the dials, wider aperture in camera A mode (a shutter speed will never go very fast if not in bright light though). Or just set faster shutter in S mode or M mode.

If in P mode, it sets both, but P mode with flash will try its best to never go faster than sync speed (because HSS is not such a hot deal. ) You might be seeing that, but you can spin the shutter dial to force P mode into HSS mode.

This Auto FP mode (when the shutter is actually faster than the Auto FP menu) becomes continuous light, which eliminates sync requirements, but it reduces flash power to about 20% which reduces range. This can be very noticeable. It should be able to do fill flash in bright sun up to about 10 or 12 feet.

There would be zero advantage of using this HSS mode indoors (in dim light). The regular speedlight mode will run circles around it in all respects, power, speed, range.

The mode does allow a faster shutter in bright light though, mostly for the purpose of shooting portraits at f/2.8 at 1/3200 second in bright sun (if that is a goal). A major thing is that now the continuous HSS flash also equivalent exposures, exactly like sunlight now (continuous light).

Or the mode simply could provide a faster shutter speed in bright light, but the short range rules out many sports situations for that. In dimmer light, the flash is much faster than the shutter speed anyway.

This thread was very helpful.

I just ran into the max flash sync speed issue yesterday for the first time with my D5200 and builtin flash. I was taking a graduation photo at a park and had my camera set at 1/1000, ISO 100 and F2.0 for bokeh, I was blurring a nice big jacaranda tree in the background. I was shooting during the day with my subject in shade. I decided to try some photos with fill flash and noticed my shutter speed would drop to 1/200 every time I popped the flash, which completely overexposed my photo. I quickly realized why that was happening from a previous conversation with a photographer. I worked without the flash and took some photos in auto mode where I got some with flash although less bokeh. I wasn't quick enough on my feet to figure out how to completely reset my camera manually to get the same shot at 1/200 by adding my ND filter and adjusting the ISO and aperture so I could use my flash and get the same looking photo as my initial settings.

I have a Mieke MK-910 on order already, so I went to their website to read about the max synch flash, which I hadn't previously thought about, and it sounds like I will be able to get a higher sync rate, which the Mieke website explains is useful for my exact situation yesterday when shooting outdoors with a wide aperture for fill light.

Hi rijman, I'm not sure of the capabilities of aftermarket flashes but according to nikon only the sb800/sb800 models can overcome the max sync flash speed on anything in the d3xxx,d5xxx or d7xxx lines. Just a suggestion, shoot in raw format and post process will usually fix lighting issues very easily

Or u could try using a reflector to control light placement, that should overcome the need for hss in a portaits situation